The evidence is in: The cloud’s advantages are now clear to business

The business community is now seeing directly how the cloud is transformative for business, not something simply for technologists to use

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One of the likely outcomes of moving to the public cloud is altering how products are designed, a recent Harvard Business Review article shows. With cloud, there is closer collaboration between corporate IT departments and business units—sales, finance, forecasting, and even customer interaction. In fact, the HBR article shows that many IT departments have jointly developed products with their customers.

Many report that new ways of writing and deploying software in the cloud encourage new types of faster organizational designs. The feedback loops enabled by cloud computing seem to allow direct interaction with the product producer, no matter if it’s a thing or software, and with the ultimate customers.

As the cloud technology advances, it’s becoming easier for companies to design and build products and services in cloud-based systems. This extends to sales and marketing as well. The cloud, in essence, becomes a common repository for the collection and analysis of new data. And it lets you take full advantage of the possibilities of tools such as machine learning, chatbots, internet of things, and other cool technologies that many in corporate America view as disrupters.

What’s significant about this finding is that it’s in a mainstream business journal, and not from yours truly or other cloud pundits. It means the cloud has likely crossed the chasm between IT promises and actual results, and now produces real value for the business. Most important, the businesses know it.

As technologists, we quickly find the value of new technologies. We will deal with the next shiny objects because we’re trained to do that to stay relevant in our careers. However, there is often a huge gap between what the technology actually does and its proven value to the business. Only when the business sees the value can the technology be used for its full potential.

The cloud has proven itself to the business, for the most part. It’s now a systemic technology that is part of many business systems, and it now can move companies from followers to innovators—thanks to the agility and speed of cloud computing rather than any other aspect of this technology.

The fact that businesses have started to use the cloud as a means of incorporating customers and partners into design, production, and sales processes means that customers feel integrated with the company’s systems and so are more likely to stay on as customers, as well as spend more money. We technologists saw that coming, but now the business does too. Prepare for the next wave of deepened cloud adoption as a result.